DID you know that Google has been recording you without your knowledge?

The technology giant has effectively turned millions of its users’ smartphones into listening devices that can capture intimate conversations – even when they aren’t in the room.

Just for the sake of curiosity, I followed the directions in this article to see if there was aything on me. Apparently, at some point I had turned of most of the tracking stuff. But not all. My YouTube viewing history was there. (Fortunately, it was my viewing history for only Youtube… IYKWIMAITYD)

I have met some people who gently insist that, when having conversations with them in person, the phones be disabled or left elsewhere. Perhaps there’s some merit to that.

Interesting article and very much worth reading from a privacy standpoint. You’d have to be insane to think that there aren’t .gov actors who take advantage of these sorts of things.

Before I throw my two cents in, here’s a few other articles worth reading:
4 Good Reasons To Get an Emergency Burner Phone
Sick of the NSA Tracking You? Burn Them with a Burner Phone
How NSA breakthrough may allow tracking of “burner” cell phones
Burner phone? There’s an app for that, and it’s earning millions of dollars

It’s not that I’m doing anything wrong, it’s just that I really value my privacy. Sometimes, you really don’t want some stranger knowing your ‘real’ phone number. For example, if you were posting a car for sale on Craigslist, you really don’t want people calling you at 2am for the next six months after the ad runs. Or getting the slew of robocalls and unsolicited sales calls that come with it. So..the solution is a disposable ‘burner’ phone.

These things are normally associated with criminal activities, and there is some merit to that, but if you think about it, it makes sense…who has the most to lose by having their privacy and relative anonymity compromised? People who are facing jail if they get caught. And since I’m the kind of guy who feels that who I communicate with is no ones business but me, I want to be able to keep my privacy and the best way to do that so far are those stupid ‘pay-as-you-go’ overpriced phones. But, hey, what’s your privacy worth?

So, first step, you go into a WalMart or other venue and buy a phone. At the moment, no ID is required to buy one of these things so your name isn’t attached to it. (Although I fully expect this to change pretty soon.) Pay cash..don’t be an idiot. Where’s the liability in this exchange? I suppose if The Powers That Be really want to, they could come into the WalMart (or wherever) and demand video surveillance of all purchases during a particular time frame. Lets say you buy your phone on February 1. You activate the phone on May 2. The feds track the phone by the manufacturer to the wholesaler to a particular store, and then they ask for the weeks worth of video prior to that activation. So..you can either shop where you don’t think there’ll be a video record, or, do your activation so far after the purchase date that the surveillance video is long overwritten. It might also be a good idea not to buy your phone at the store thats three blocks from where you live. Think about that.

Next up, you have to activate the phone. This usually requires you to call from another phone. Obviously you don’t want to use your own phone, nor do you want to get any of your friends involved, so you need an ‘arms reach’ phone. Fortunately many places (banks, hotels, etc.) have a phone sitting on their counter for customers to use. The same cautions about surveillance video apply. And, again, try to do it far from where you sleep. If someone wants to tie you to a particular phone number, it’s gonna look pretty bad if the activation call came from a bank four blocks from your house, and the phone was purchased at the Walmart five blocks from your house. Think.

Next up, you have to power up the phone. If you’re smart, you’ll never power this thing up anywhere near where you sleep. The idea is that if the phone sends signals to the towers, you don’t want that signal giving away your location. In short, charging up your phone by your bedside will compromise your privacy. If you really want to be cautious, buy a battery phone charger, charge the charger up at home (or get a disposable-battery-powered one), take it and your phone somewhere on the other side of town, plug the phone into your battery-powered charger, and hide it somewhere secure until its fully charged. After that, pop the battery out of the phone and only put the battery in when you are actually making/taking a call and when you are nowhere near anyplace you’d feel uncomfortable with people tracking your location to. In other words, don’t call from your bathroom.

Eventually, your time on the card expires. Renew it? You could, but realistically you’re better off, from a privacy standpoint, to toss it and start a new one. The longer you use the same phone, the more likely noticeable patterns will emerge and the people digging into the phone records will notice those patterns.

This article ( The Right Way To Destroy An Old Hard Drive) got me thinking……

I’m a huge fan of privacy. And any sod that tells me that I don’t need crypto because ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide’ is a short-sighted statist who will be one of the first ones up against the wall when the revolution gets here.

Will snoop-proof cryptography and secure phones/computers make law enforcement and governments job more difficult? Absolutely. Is that a good enough reason to prevent it’s availability? Absolutely not. Yes, terrorists, murderers, kid diddlers, and all sorts of scum are going to use it. The fact that bad guys use it is not reason enough to keep me from using it.

By and large, I’m a pretty law-abiding guy..in the Heinlein way (“I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.“) But that doesn’t mean I feel anyone…spouses, government, church, my mom….should be able to just go spelunking through my hard drive when they have an itch.

Government is a shoddy creature when it comes to respecting your privacy, but it’s an Einstein-level genius when it comes to violating it. And thats why when you decide it’s time to upgrade your computer, it takes more than a simple wipe to make sure your German dungeon porn, Picard/Riker slash fiction, Katy Perry bootlegs, and .jpgs of that really, really, ill-advised waitress from Buffalo Wild Wings don’t wind up on someone elses computer.

Lots of people say that all you have to do is degausee your drive. Look, I’m not the trusting type. If I degause a drive how do I know it really worked? I’m not cracking my computer open, putting the degaussed drive back in , and then trying to read it. No..the best way is utter destruction. And, fortunately, for guys like you and me, there’s a very convenient method that is just a range trip away.

Seems like a good idea. But, really, you need to sink more than just a few rounds into each one of these.

But you have to remember – you would think that punching a couple holes in a drives platter would be enough. I would too. But I am virtually positive that someone, somewhere, has the technology to ‘skip around’ those damaged parts of the disk and get information. Sure, not all of it, but perhaps enough to be a problem. So…a couple holes ain’t gonna do the trick.

One or two hits won’t do it. You need to see daylight…a lot of it…through this thing.

Don’t spare the FMJ. What you want is enough metal-shredding terminal ballistics to remove great gouts of material.

Much better!

I usually take the drive to the range, stand a few yards back from it, and hammer it with half a mag of .223 or .308 until it looks like some sort of shredded-metal sculpture. Then I twist and break it into a couple different pieces and toss ’em in the dumpster.

I saw on the news that the FBI is looking for the hard drive the San Bernadino shooters used. The feds had sent divers into a pond looking for the drive, which means that they fully expect to be able to recover data from a waterlogged drive…which is reasonable, since water won’t really affect magnetic disks. But you just know those guys have all sortsa technology for recovering data from disks people ‘thought theyd erased’.

I mention this not because you or I are engaged in criminal activities that we need to hide, (Well, I’m not..I dont know what youve been up to), but rather because it’s too easy to take the simple way out, whack the ol’ Western Digital with a hammer a few times, call it good, and toss a drive into the trash that could potentially come back and bite you in the butt.

So…if you got a new computer for Christmas, and youre tossing out that old drive to make new for the new shiny one, do the smart thing and head to the range with it.